Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister asks whether the need for advanced development expertise is on the decline in an era in which tools grow increasingly more advanced, and coding increasingly moves offshore. 'Few companies share Google's zeal for academic credentials when hiring new developers. Many are willing to accept self-taught programmers, particularly if they have other skills relevant to the business.'

Just because they taught you Fortran and you know how to do differential equations doesn't qualify you as a computer scientist. It's important to point out here that nowhere in the engineering discipline is there any coverage of algorithms and data-structures which are fundamental concepts for solving problems in computer science. I've never met an engineer who would know an NP-complete problem if it hit him/her square in the face.

Also, if you think those things I've mentioned: data-structures, algorithms and NP-completeness are "theoretical BS" then you've no idea how useful these concepts are when solving real world problems.